Makonde fire, 13 October 2026 Makonde
The fire started on 13 October 2026 in Makonde, Zimbabwe, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,098 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 27th largest in Mashonaland West since 2016 (of 825 with a page). Number 10 in Zimbabwe in 2026, of 381.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 8,098ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 13 Oct 2026 – 26 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 13 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 105
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 51MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 28 Oct.
This area had burned before
27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 954 ha in 2016, 381 ha in 2019, 67 ha in 2021, 1,878 ha in 2022, 484 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,220 ha that had burned before.
- 1,837 ha Makonde fire, October 2022 6,062 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 838 ha Makonde fire, October 2016 2,671 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 449 ha Makonde fire, September 2025 4,302 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 372 ha Makonde fire, September 2019 1,294 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 116 ha Makonde fire, September 2016 2,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 67 ha Makonde fire, November 2021 5,294 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 41 ha Makonde fire, October 2022 3,264 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 34 ha Makonde fire, October 2025 1,056 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Makonde where it started8,115 ha reached on 13 Oct0.9 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Oct | 32.5 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Oct | 33.5 °C | 22 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Oct | 33.3 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 Oct | 31.5 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Oct | 32.2 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Oct | 33.2 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 19 Oct | 35.1 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Oct | 37.0 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 21 Oct | 36.0 °C | 19 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Oct | 37.0 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 23 Oct | 38.9 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 24 Oct | 33.7 °C | 27 % | 48 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 43 |
| 25 Oct | 31.7 °C | 31 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Oct | 33.0 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 27 Oct after | 35.7 °C | 19 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Oct after | 37.1 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 1.4 mm | High 34 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 15 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 105Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Makonde fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 October 2026 to 26 October 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 October 2026 to 24 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,098 hectares (81.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Makonde (8,115 ha, 0.9 %).
- Is the Makonde fire still active?
- No fire detections since 26 Oct 2026, 11:38 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Zimbabwe (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 26 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 October 2026 to 24 October 2026. 105 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.